


a scream lost in a paper cup

by reogulus



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Internalized Misogyny, Manipulation, Misogyny, Power Dynamics, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: “There can be many, many perspectives to one story. Of all people, I think you should know.”
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	a scream lost in a paper cup

On the morning of Shiv’s wedding, Willa and Tabitha flashed their camera-ready smiles as svelte, leggy bookends of the Roy family photo, all lined up in front of the mossy rocks adorned with vines of white roses. Connor’s grip around her waist was tighter than usual, as if there was a point to prove. He was no doubt ready to wave the photos around like a trophy as soon as he gets his hands on them.

The family line broke apart as soon as the photographer called it a wrap. Willa watched, carefully, tracing the path each of them took. The observational suited her better than the conversational, and that was the only truth she knew at any Roy family event. Kendall and Rava were the first to break from the pack, of course. He took up shelter with his metrosexual friend, she took it up with their children. Shiv and Tom, mingling with Mr. and Mrs. Wambsgans, and for once she seemed to smile more than she talked. Roman and Tabitha were posing for selfies from a multitude of angles, with Tabitha’s long arm holding the camera effortlessly, the shimmers of her long, manicured nails showed off nicely against the black of her phone case.

“They’re cute together, right?” Willa turned to ask Connor, who kept an arm wrapped around her and scrolled through his Instagram feed with his other hand.

“Who?” He asked, absent-minded, entirely fixated on quotes in white block letters placed against backdrops of supposedly motivational images in saturated colors.

“Roman and Tabitha, I mean,” she already regretted asking him. She shouldn’t have thought out loud.

“Oh, yeah, no kidding. Roman did well with her! I think he got her number from Tom, actually, after, well, you know that story,” Connor smiled with knowingness. “But of course, I’m sorry to say they are no match for us. Like, as soon as those photos come out in print, everyone will know we are empirically proven to be the most photogenic couple in the group. Isn’t that exciting?”

Willa turned the corners of her mouth to a smile and nodded. In the months they’d spent living together, she’d learned quickly that most questions he asked required no response. She took his hand in hers, and they walked back inside for brunch.

Tabitha drops in unannounced at the hotel penthouse one afternoon. She remains the only one to have done so, aside from that time Shiv came over and invited herself to the bar with Willa. To date, she is the only non-Roy to have done so.

“I was in the area and thought it would be cool to drop by,” Tabitha must have caught the barely concealed look of confusion on her, and its obviousness has compelled her to substitute this half-explanation for a normal greeting. They still hug, though; Tabitha doesn’t so much as pull Willa into a hug as she envelopes Willa in her flurry of golden curls and tasteful perfume, being a full head taller than Willa to begin with and wearing heels. Barefoot in her slippers, Willa has to reach up on tip toes to meet her embrace.

“What a nice surprise,” Willa raises a hand to tuck a loose strand of her bangs behind her ear. She’s feeling stiff all over. No one who knows her through the Roys comes to her without a plan, without a role they already have in mind for her. And Tabitha has always been nice to her, in every party room and at every dinner table, just—nice. Willa thinks she would take comfort in hearing the other shoe drop, at last.

“Yeah, you know, I remembered you said friends and family can drop in any time, right? They’re all gone at Argestes for the weekend, so I thought it might be nice to hang out here.”

 _All gone_ , Willa takes stock of way Tabitha says it, transparent and unthinking in taking Connor out of the denominator like they all do. “Oh, um, of course. Actually, Connor is away at the ranch until Tuesday anyway, so it’s, yeah, nice to hang out. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Just a water is fine, thank you,” Tabitha smiles politely, her hands crossed in her lap. Willa turns to the kitchenette and the mini fridge, all too aware of Tabitha’s eyes following her from the couch. It’s an observational look, without judgment—nothing like the eyes Roman and Shiv had on her, from scathing condescension to indifferent pretense. It’s funny how getting used to the observer role can make someone so uncomfortable with being observed. Willa tucks the thought away and pours herself a little extra from the whiskey bottle.

“So, how’s the presidential campaign?” Tabitha gets into it as soon as their fingers brush against each other when Willa hands her the water bottle.

“Is this, like, phase two of the campaign assault?” Willa punctuates the question with a breathy laugh, to cushion the potential harshness on that last word. She must remain on tip toes around Tabitha, to be on her level, even figuratively speaking as they sit across the coffee table.

Tabitha just furrows her perfectly arched, perfectly plucked eyebrows, but Willa can tell she’s amused. A cat toying with a dying rat, coy and cloying under the veneer of sweetness. “I thought that wouldn’t be a taboo topic, would it? We’re friends.”

“We…” Willa swallows around the word she is about to say, “are. We are. I just don’t get involved, haha, I know the family is not the biggest fan of…what Connor chooses to do, sometimes, uh, employment wise.”

“Right,” Tabitha takes a sip of the water. “And you are.”

“What?”

“A fan.”

“A fan, a friend,” Willa laughs. She tries to hold Tabitha’s gaze; it makes her feel a little shaky, still, but it’s good practice. “We support each other’s dreams, so he’s as much of a fan of me as I am of him. I’ve said the same to Shiv before.”

“Ah, a fair exchange. That’s nice.”

“Thanks,” Willa darts her tongue out, moistens her lips. She hasn’t touched her drink yet. She is itching to try it while she has home advantage, to test out the line she’s been turning over in her head, as if testing out a line she’s imagined for her yet-untitled play. “Like a nickel for a hand job under the bridge, right?”

“That’s a good one,” Tabitha chuckles, in a way that does not betray if she registers that it is the exact same line she’d used on Connor in this very room. “And speaking of a good one—did you see the editorial that Financial Weekly did on Shiv’s wedding?”

“No, not yet,” Willa catches herself looking away and steels herself to hold Tabitha’s gaze steady. She takes her first sip of the whiskey. “I don’t think we got our subscription yet.”

Willa treats Connor like family, which is to say he thinks he is supposed to love her, but she knows he can’t handle the full truth of her and she must protect him, from the truth that will cause him the hurt. Because that’s what you do with family; you would lie, steal, and cheat to protect them. And to be fair, Willa only does one of those three things for Connor’s sake, still no match for Logan Roy, who has mastered them all.

Connor likes telling the story of their first meeting to anyone who would listen, and he phrases the details ever so slightly every single time. Willa can’t be sure if the variation is intentional, or if it’s just Connor. The truth of that story barely has an arc to it: Roman couldn’t handle her touching him, anywhere, at all. Said he’d prefer women with a lower body temperature, not hands that felt like burning even when they only touched him through his clothes, how that just won’t do especially in midsummer. According to Roman it was a no-fault termination of the arrangement, which entitled Willa to a mulligan. It was all really fucking professional, until Connor walked through the doors of the bar on their first date and told Willa he loved her within the next ten minutes. And then Willa found herself realizing that she’d have to recalibrate her understanding of professional, if she wanted to stick around.

Willa watches, again, as this family picks apart her art like a buffet lunch. Shiv fucks Chris, which is fine, it’s all the fun a second understudy can expect to have. But it’s a problem when Kendall manages to steal Jennifer from under her eyes, and then returns her a confused, jet-lagged mess, locking herself in the dressing room for hours, and she still hasn’t apologized for ditching the play last-minute like that. She’s in no fit state to go on stage tonight, that much is a foregone conclusion. But Willa wants to try—to understand.

Balancing a tray with lattes and poke bowls on one arm, a stack of scripts on the other, Willa finally manages to convince Jennifer to open the door near the end of lunch break. “Hey, you okay?” She pulls Jennifer into a hug after setting everything down on the cluttered table. Jennifer leans into her pliantly, her head weighs heavy on Willa’s shoulder. When Willa starts to pull away from the hug, she sees that Jennifer’s makeup is a total mess; it’s almost hard to tell where the smudged mascara ends and the dark circles begin.

“I just don’t understand,” After they are done eating, Jennifer nurses the latte in her hands, clings to its warmth like a wet dog. “He told me he can hook me up with the roles at his movie studio, and now I’m fucked.”

Willa smiles, “Connor told me the same thing when we met. I mean, sort of.”

“How did you do it?” The question slips out of Jennifer’s mouth, at first unabashed and unthinking, but her face turns wary as soon as she has said it. Willa clears her throat, makes sure to take a slow, measured sip of her drink.

“Um, I didn’t have to do anything, not in particular. We support each other on our projects, you know, we are both about changing minds. He wants to do it through politics, I want to do it through drama. We’re very compatible,” she pauses before adding, “in that sense.”

“Right,” Jennifer nods, looking down to pick at her fingernails. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. But, like, have you been on their private jet?”

Willa is about to say no when she catches herself before the sound comes out. “Uh…why?”

“I’m just curious,” there’s a sharpness to Jennifer’s voice, a half-sneer hanging on the corner of her lips. It occurs to Willa that she may not actually give a damn that Willa can fire her right there and then—well, not anymore. Later, Willa will regret letting the sharpness sting her, even by that tiny little bit.

“I was just reading a magazine when he flew me to Dundee. I think they did a piece on his sister’s wedding in England? But I didn’t see you in any of the family photos, so I thought that was weird.”

The corner of Willa’s mouth twitches just slightly, the aftermath of a flinch she can’t quite keep down. She chuckles quietly, before changing the subject to the latest revisions to the script.

At Mo’s funeral, Connor actually did manage to garner interest for his campaign, from none other than the men of his dad’s Wolf Pack. At first Willa thought it was a nepotism thing, or at least mutual back scratching, but one of the guys who talked about committing abhorrent crimes like taking a walk in the park caught up to her. Connor was away in the bathroom; they were just getting ready to leave after the eulogies were delivered.

“Oh, yes,” the man mentioned a dollar figure and Willa smiled in auto-response. “Thank you for supporting Con’s campaign, he’s been working really hard on it and I know he very much appreciates the support.”

“So how long do you give it?” The man finishes his drink, sets it down on a nearby table with a heavy _thud_ , but his voice is bright and cheery. She thinks back to the accounts of criminality, so nonchalantly told around her prior.

“I’m sorry?”

“The campaign. Do you think it will last more than two months? We have a little pool going,” he gestured towards his friends chatting with some women in another corner, “and we’ve agreed that if Connor manages to keep this going for at least 10 more weeks, we will donate half of the money in the pool to the campaign.”

“Well that’s,” Willa cleared her throat to reset the disgust she couldn’t quite hide in her eyes, “interesting. So…” she trailed off, waiting for the man to fill in what he had in mind for this conversation.

“I’ll give you a thirty percent cut if you can convince him to announce the end of his campaign, say, exactly eight weeks from now. We can get into the specifics later, you know, if the total somehow exceeds what he currently pays you,” the man pats her arm lightly, easy as if they were already friends. “I mean no offence, of course. You get the idea.”

Willa stood there, still and quiet, half-smiling as she nodded. He slipped a card into her coat pocket and a shudder passed through her thigh and hip as his fingers brushed against the lining of the pocket. She looked up and saw the curve of his mouth curve into a smirk, which disappeared from her line of sight as quickly as she’d caught it, as he turned around to join his friends in the other corner. She wondered if there was a bet-within-a-bet about her choice on the matter, too.

“They really will do anything to make someone stay,” Tabitha says. It’s getting dark outside, and Willa has managed to swap out her water for a glass of rosé. She can’t tell if Tabitha will leave before she has to leave for rehearsal.

“Like?”

“Like, I don’t know, I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that Marcia asked me to come check on you. Something about Mo’s funeral, and her feeling like you didn’t do what she asked. She wants to know what the fuck’s been going on.”

“I didn’t think you would care about that stuff.”

“I didn’t think I would, either. But I also thought it wouldn’t hurt? Just hang out for a bit, have a nice conversation. That fucking Russian doll of,” Tabitha swivels her glass a bit, the slosh of the wine mimics the circle-jerk of it all, “scheming by delegation, and sub-delegation, and verification by another party, all over again. It’s never quite good enough as just doing it yourself, of course.”

Willa tosses her head back and drains her glass of whiskey, at last. She’s been careful to take small sips, but it seems that they’ve reached the act of the reveal, at last.

“I think you are more interesting than you let on, Willa.”

“Is that what Marcia told you to say?”

“No,” Tabitha’s denial comes in a bright, cheery wrapper, as if fully transparent, with convincing clarity in her eyes. “And would you trust me, if I say that I’m here only for you? That I will not play Marcia’s game for her either.”

Willa gets up from her seat. She blinks, swallows, shoots a quick glance at her watch. “I’m sorry, but I have to get ready for tonight’s rehearsal.”

“Right, of course,” Tabitha nods. “I’ll take the elevator down with you, then.”

Someone took a video of Connor’s eulogy—could have been Michelle Pantsil, could have been anyone else she would have planted in the audience to be extra eyes and ears. It was posted on Instagram a few days ago, then shared, liked, commented. Connor’s personal account is tagged first, then his campaign account. In total he’s gained hundreds of thousands of new followers, the credit of which stealthily misappropriated by his campaign managers. Willa has gained one new follower: Tabitha. Her thumb hover over her phone for barely a half-second of hesitation; she follows her back.

Willa’s Instagram—her new one, not the old one that has been thoroughly scrubbed and discarded and billed to Connor’s card—is barebones. She doesn’t post anything except quotes that serve as inspiration for Sands, and the next project she has started, that she’s kept secret and untitled, therefore entirely her own. After some time of abstention, the way some people do with added sugar, she is not as interested in taking or posting photos of herself at this point. Connor has been posting more of her on his account, though. The feeling of impermanence begins with the one of her in front of his campaign logo in their hotel suite—she can’t quite shake it off.

“Willa,” a familiar voice called out to her, over the sound of running water as Willa rinsed her hands again. Her feet carried her to the women’s room to wash her hands after that conversation with the man of the wolf pack, and the trash bin would have been the perfect place to dump the card in her pocket.

“Hi, Michelle,” the tap went silent as Willa grabbed a piece of paper towel to dry off. Being cornered in the bathroom where Connor couldn’t whisk her away—an oldie but a goodie.

“It’s always in the bathroom, isn’t it? With women who aren’t supposed to cross paths, allegedly.” Michelle said with a smile.

“It’s smart, yeah, nice move.”

Michelle chuckled, pushed her glasses up her nose bridge. “I saw you on your phone, after Connor gave you the first draft of his little speech. Before you took your pen out.”

Willa looks away. She said nothing.

Michelle sidestepped her to lean over the other sink, started washing her hands as she continued, “That’s the thing with parachutes, I find. If not deployed properly, the strong fabric can just as easily get tangled up or, worse, strangle someone. Even golden parachutes.”

“I—” Willa steeled herself; she sucked in deeply the stale-tasting air in the room. “I don’t think he wrote anything in there that would add to what you already have. From Mo, I mean, Lester.”

“There can be many, many perspectives to one story. Of all people, I think you should know.”

“Okay,” Willa nodded, “I’ll think about it.” When she turned around to step outside the bathroom, Connor was already waiting in the hallway.

Connor likes to spoon her when they sleep together, some nights he’d come to her bed and ask to only hold her, using a variety of expressions that he’s picked up from his readings. The first time it happened, when she’d just settled in at Austerlitz, she was so confused that she ended up giving him a handjob anyway. He squirmed a bit under her touch, but didn’t end up using their safe word, regardless.

“I think I would like you to stay, for a while, you know, not forever, but, as close to it as you can possibly manage. That would be nice, right?” He nipped at her nape and whispered, after the orgasm had passed.

Willa felt her throat tighten. The story that Marcia told her about the disguised murder in a gas explosion at a restaurant in Paris sounds like a fantastical plan that would require meticulous planning and maneuvering, but a lifeless mutilated body being left out in the desert and getting mummified under the scalding sun sounds like a lot less work in comparison.

It flashed before her eyes for a fraction of a second, that last perfect smile and wave that Marcia directed at her as she and Logan were driven away. She wonders, briefly, how deep that well of trauma runs—to what extent will Connor and any of his siblings go to get someone to stay? She’d heard about the story about Connor and the dog with cancer from the kitchen staff. She knew it’s an inevitability, whether she dies before he breaks up with her or vice versa—he won’t do it himself, he will hire someone to do it to her just so he doesn’t have to watch.

She closed her eyes, tried to imagine Connor’s hands around her neck. Nothing came to her mind.

As soon as she sees Connor ordering the full bottle of burgundy for breakfast, Willa knows—as hard as it was to accept—that he’s come to a crossroads, which means she will come to one of her own, sooner than she’d feared.

She floats through the rest of the day in an irritated daze, the sun gets to be unbearable so she keeps her sunglasses on except for mealtimes. It is rare for her and Connor to spend this much time together without speaking much, but out here on the yacht, at least the gaps of silence are naturally filled by sounds of the sea, the waves and the gulls. At dinner, the fraught atmosphere on the corporate side is finally diffused—they have decided on their sacrifice. Willa can’t find it in herself to learn the details.

“You’re all off the hook,” Kendall says, but the absolution he delivers is not meant for Willa or Connor. That much is obvious: Connor’s face looked like curdled cream after his talk with Logan, and thus the ensuing problem requires a much different solution, something else to toss overboard. They eat in silence for the rest of the meal, along with everyone else, except Connor won’t make eye contact with her, just keeps topping up his wine glass.

Willa finds herself thinking about Naomi Pierce, laying awake in bed that night. What it was perhaps foreshadowing, that she was on the yacht but not Tabitha, that she eventually had to leave too. Willa unlocks her phone and checks; Tabitha still follows her. She leaves her phone asides, waits for the screen to fade to black again.

“Will?” Connor calls out to her in the dark, from behind her back. He says her name like he’s about to choke on his tears. Everything he’s said to her can be distilled down to a cry for help, in one way or another.

Willa turns around, presses a kiss to his forehead. He nudges closer to her, resting his head in the curve of her elbow as she strokes his fine, greying hair.

“Shh, shh,” she soothes him in the whispering voice that he likes best. “I’ll be fine, baby. Do what you have to do. I don’t blame you for this.”

She holds him there, until he drifts off to sleep and her shoulder starts to fall numb. When she’s sure of the depth of his slumber, she moves his head back onto the pillow, sits up and gets off the bed.

Willa reaches for her phone. There are no bars for cell service, but the WiFi is strong enough. She pulls up the Mail app, searches for Michelle’s email address. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a minute. She thinks of falling out of the sky with the parachute blooming beautifully against the cloudless sky, unfolding into the shape of power.

“Well, thanks for having me,” Tabitha says, as they step out into the lobby. The elevator ride is too short, too long, and too much of Tabitha’s scent, all at once.

“Thanks for coming.”

And they hug, again.

“If you want to take a trophy back to Marcia,” Willa whispers in Tabitha’s ear. She feels like a pressure valve waiting for release, “I have photos of what Connor was going to say for his speech before I scrubbed it safe. I know what Michelle Pantsil would have heard from Logan’s old friends who showed at the funeral. I know what Maria would have said to Pantsil, the fact that she even invited her there. I have everything it takes to play the game, if that’s what Marcia wants.”

Tabitha pulls back. She looks at Willa, as if deep in thought for a moment, her lips pursed. “I think you’d better call Marcia yourself, Willa.”

“But you’re here.”

“I am. For you, not for Marcia. It takes a lot to rouse the pathologically incurious, like me. I want to see how it ends for you. I think that will be a lot more interesting to behold than your play, don’t you?”

The air in the lobby is temperate, the marble floor warm under Willa’s feet. A shudder passes through her anyway—how it feels, to be so observed.

Tabitha hugs her quickly for a final time, before walking out. “Keep me posted, alright? And thanks for the follow back on Insta.”

The next morning on the yacht, Willa skips breakfast, stays in the cabin as Connor leaves to watch his brother’s ritualized murder on broadcast. She reads through the new email from Michelle, replies with a crisp line of _yes_.

She toggles to Instagram, finds Tabitha, types out the message _I did it_. She pauses and considers it, the juxtaposition of the small text in black, under Tabitha’s smiling profile photo, lets the feeling wash over her for a second too long.

She clears those three words without hitting _send_. For those who keep watch, there is always more than one way to see. Of all people, Willa should know.

**Author's Note:**

> I did not intend for this to get as long and disjointed as it did, but here we are! Title is plucked from "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos.


End file.
